Modi alphabet

Modi (Marathi: मोडी, Mōḍī, IPA: [moːɖiː]) is a script used to write the Marathi language, which is the primary language spoken in the state of Maharashtra in western India. There are at least two different theories concerning its origin. Modi was an official script used to write Marathi until the 20th century when the Balbodh style of the Devanagari script was promoted as the standard writing system for Marathi. Although Modi was primarily used to write Marathi, other languages such as Urdu, Kannada, Gujarati, Hindi and Tamil are also known to have been written in Modi.^[2]

Etymology

The name ‘Modi’ perhaps derives from the Marathi verb moḍaṇe (Marathi: मोडणे), which means “to bend or break”. Modi is believed to be derived from broken Devanagari characters, which lends support to that particular etymology.^[2]

Origin Theories

Hemāḍpant Origin Theory

Hemāḍpant was a minister during the reign of Mahadeva^[3] (ruled 1261–1271) and the initial years of the reign of Rāmachandra (ruled 1271 to 1309)^[4] of the Yadava Dynasty.^[5][6][7]

Creation Subtheory

Hemāḍpant created the Modi script.^[6]

Refinement Subtheory

The Modi script already existed in the 13th century. It was refined and introduced as an official script for Marathi by Hemāḍpant.^[1]

Sri Lanka Subtheory

Hemāḍpant brought the Modi script to India from Sri Lanka.^[2][7]

Bāḷājī Avajī Origin Theory

Bāḷājī Avajī was the secretary of state to the Maratha king Shivaji Raje Bhonsle (ruled 1642–1680). Bāḷājī Avajī created the Modi script.^[2]

History

There are various styles of the Modi script associated with a particular era. Many changes occurred in each era ^[2][3]

Proto-Modi

The proto-Modi style, or ādhyakālīn (आद्यकालीन), style appears in the 12th century.

Yādav Era

The Yadav Era style, or yādavkālīn (यादव कालीन), emerged as a distinct style in the 13th century during the Yādav Dynasty.

Bahamanī Era

The Bahamanī Era style, or bahamanīkālīn (बहमनी कालीन), appeared in the 14th–16th centuries during the Bahmani Sultanate.

Shiva Era

In Shiva Era, or shivakālīn (शिव कालीन), which was during the 17th century, the Chitnisi style of the Modi script developed.

Peshwa Era

In the Peshwa Era, or peshvekālīn (पेश्वे कालीन), various Modi styles proliferated during the Maratha Empire and lasted until 1818. The distinct styles of Modi used during this period are Chitnisi, Bilavalkari, Mahadevapanti, and Ranadi.

British Colonial Era

The British Colonial era, or the anglākālīn (आंग्ल कालीन), is the final stage of the Modi script. It is associated with British rule and was used from 1818 to 1952. On 25 July 1917, the Bombay Presidency decided to replace the Modi script with the Balbodh style of Devnagari as the primary script of administration for the sake of convenience and uniformity with the other areas of the presidency. The Modi script continued to be taught in schools until several decades later and continued to be used as an alternate script to the Balbodh style of Devnagari. The script was still widely used up until the 1940s by the people of older generation for personal and financial uses.

Post-independence Era

An effort to conserve the Modi Script under India Post's My Stamp scheme.Here, the word 'Marathi' is printed in the "Modi' script.

The use of Modi has diminished since the independence of India. Now the Balbodh style of Devnagari is the primary script used to write Marathi.^[8][9] Some linguists in Pune have recently begun trying to revive the script.^[10]

Description

Overview

The Modi script derives from the Nāgari family of scripts and is a modification of the Balbodh style of the Devanagari script intended for continuous writing. Although Modi is based upon Devanagari, it differs considerably from the it in terms of letterforms, rendering behaviors, and orthography. The shapes of some consonants, vowels, and vowel signs are similar. The actual differences are visible in the behaviors of these characters in certain environments, such as consonant-vowel combinations and in consonant conjuncts, that are standard features of Modi orthography. The Modi script has 46 distinctive letters, of which 36 are consonants and 10 vowels.^[2]

Cursive Features

The Modi script has several characteristics facilitate writing so that moving from one character to the next miminises lifting the pen from the paper for dipping in ink. Some characters are “broken” versions of their Devanagari counterparts. Many characters are more “circular” in shape. Thus, Modi was a sort of “cursive” style of writing Marathi. The Modi script does not have long ‘ī’ (ई) and long ‘ū’ (ऊ) of Devanagari.^[3] The cursive nature of the script also allowed scribes to easily make multiple copies of a document if required.^[10]

Shown here is a picture showing all the Modi script characters in the kotem1 clip font.

Features of the Letters

There are numerous modifications that are made to the Modi script in writing as "shortcuts," reflecting its history as a quasi-shorthand form of Devanagari.

The consonants fall into three broad categories: 1) Those that always retain their isolated form and attach their dependent vowel forms in a way common to most Indic scripts; 2) Those that take on a "contextual" form and change their form only in the presence of a dependent vowel immediately after, in which case those vowel forms are attached to the contextual form of the consonant in a uniform way as done with the consonants in Category 1 and with most other Indic alphabets; and 3) Those that form ligatures in the presence of vowel following the consonants. The ligatures are generally determined by the shape of the consonant and the presence of a loop on the right.

Regarding conjuncts, as in Devanagari, ksha and tra have special conjuncts, while other consonants typically occupy half forms or contextual forms. The letter ra is special, as it can take different visual positions as the first consonant in a conjunct cluster depending on whether it is palatalized or not. As the second consonant in a cluster, however, it functions almost identically to Devanagari.

Alternative forms of the letter ra are also used to make multisyllabic clusters involving ra. This is seen in kara, tara, sara, and a few others as a subjoined ra to the bottom right of a letter, and in joining at the end of other syllables, it is seen with a curved head. Following dependent vowel signs like -aa and punctuation marks like dandas, the ra also joins underneath, and any additional vowel marks are written directly on top of the subjoined ra.

Modi also has an empty circle that indicates abbreviations, which also may have been borrowed by Goykanadi, used for writing Konkani, which is closely related to Marathi.

Headstroke

The headstroke in Modi is unlike Devanagari in that it is typically written before the letters are, in order to produce a "ruled page" for writing Modi in lines. Thus, there are no word boundaries that can be visibly seen, since the headstroke doesn't break between words.

Usage

The Modi script was frequently used as a shorthand script for swift writing in business and administration. Modi was used primarily by administrative people as well as businessmen in keeping their accounts and writing Hundis (credit notes). Modi was also used to encrypt the message since not all people were well versed in reading this script.^[10]

Printing and Typing

Printing

Before printing in Marathi was possible, the Modi script was used for writing prose and Balbodh was used for writing poetry. When printing in Marathi became possible, choosing between Modi and Balbodh was a problem. William Carey published the first book on Marathi grammar in 1805 using Balbodh since printing in the Modi script was not available to him in Serampore, Bengal. At the time Marathi books were generally written in Balbodh. However, in subsequent editions of William Carey's book on Marathi grammar, starting in 1810, were written in the Modi script.^[11][12] Using offset printing machines, previously Lithography printing was in vogue.

Typing

Most Modi fonts are currently clip fonts. The ‘kotem1’ developed by Ashok Kothare is no longer available. Another Modi clip font is ModiGhate.^[13] The Modi script was included in Unicode for the first time in version 7.0. This inclusion in Unicode will help preserve the script and make it easier to use in digital media.^[2][14]

Documents in the Modi Script

Most documents in Modi are handwritten. The oldest document in the Modi script is from 1389 and is preserved at the Bhārat Itihās Sanshodhan Mandal (BISM) in Pune.^[3] The majority of documents and correspondence from before Shivaji Raje Bhonsle's times are written in the Modi script.^[10]

Unicode

The Modi alphabet (U+11600–U+1165F) was added to the Unicode Standard in June 2014 with the release of version 7.0.

See also

• Balbodh
• Clip font
• Cursive
• Shikasta Nastaʿlīq, another “broken” script

References

1. 1 2 3 Bhimraoji, Rajendra (28 February 2014). "Reviving the Modi Script" (PDF). Typoday. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 December 2014. 
2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Pandey, Anshuman (5 November 2011). "Proposal to Encode the Modi Script in ISO/IEC 10646" (PDF). Unicode Consortium. 1. Background. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 July 2014. 
3. 1 2 3 4 Kulkarni, Sadanand A.; Borde, Prashant L.; Manza, Ramesh R.; Yannawar, Pravin L. (28 May 2014). "Offline Handwritten MODI Character Recognition Using HU, Zernike Moments and Zoning" (PDF). Arxiv.org. 
4. ↑ Eternal Garden: Mysticism, History, and Politics at a South Asian Sufi Center by Carl W. Ernst p.107
5. ↑ Mokashi, Digambar Balkrishna (1 July 1987). Palkhi: An Indian Pilgrimage. SUNY Press. p. 37. ISBN 0-88706-461-2. 
6. 1 2 Mann, Gurinder Singh (2001-03-01). The Making of Sikh Scripture. Oxford University Press US. p. 1. ISBN 0-19-513024-3. 
7. 1 2 "Modi Lipi Alphabets". September 2008. Archived from the original on 25 October 2013. 
8. ↑ Chhatrapati, Shahu; Sangave, Vilas Adinath; Khane, B. D. (1997). Rajarshi Shahu Chhatrapati papers 7. Shahu Research Institute. Archived from the original on 7 December 2014. 
9. ↑ "History Of Modi Lipi". Modi Lipi. Archived from the original on 25 October 2013. 
10. 1 2 3 4 "Band of researchers, enthusiasts strive to keep Modi script alive". The Times of India. 21 February 2014. Archived from the original on 10 December 2014. 
11. ↑ Rao, Goparaju Sambasiva (1994). Language Change: Lexical Diffusion and Literacy. Academic Foundation. pp. 48 and 49. ISBN 9788171880577. Archived from the original on 7 December 2014. 
12. ↑ Carey, William (1805). A Grammar of the Marathi Language. Serampur [sic]: Serampore Mission Press. ISBN 9781108056311. 
13. ↑ "Modi Ghate Font". Learn Modi. 
14. ↑ BabelStone: What's new in Unicode 7.0

External links

• MarathiCursiveG — free Modi Unicode font
• Modi at Omniglot
• Modi at Ancient Scripts
• Website about Modi Script
• Website for learning the Modi Script